It is believed fantasy sports first started around the 1940's. Since that time, fantasy sports and gaming have gained popularity, expanding to most sports. The Internet boom of the late 1990's created a revolution in the game. Enabling gamers to easily compute statistics and monitor their teams brought Rotisserie baseball into the fantasy sports industry that we know today. It is estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that 16 million U.S. adults played fantasy sports in 2006 and 22 percent of U.S. adult males 18 to 49 years old, with Internet access, play fantasy sports. Fantasy Sports are estimated to have a $3-4 billion annual economic impact across the sports industry. Fantasy sports are also popular throughout the world with leagues for soccer (known as football outside of the United States), cricket and other non-U.S. based sports.
Generally, fantasy sports (also known as rotisserie, roto, or fairy-tale sport; or owner simulation) conventionally include one or more games in which fantasy owners build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a professional sport. A fantasy team is typically comprised of at least one real-life person, most commonly a public figure and/or professional athlete, whose performance may be measured and/or quantified, and then translated into points attributable to a fantasy team. In most formats, statistical performance is converted into points, the conversion of which may be customizable for each league, that are compiled and totaled according to a roster selected by a manager that makes up a fantasy team. Point systems are typically calculated manually by the fantasy owners, including perhaps a “league commissioner” or are automated using use computer modeling of actual games based on statistical input generated by professional sports. In fantasy sports there is the ability to trade, cut, and sign players, like a real sports owner.
Fantasy sports leagues are generally of two different formats that are generally known in the art: rotisserie and head-to-head. In both formats, the competition is primarily focused on determining an overall winner over the course of season of one or more professional sports. Rotisserie fantasy sports are characterized by having one or more predetermined categories of statistics in which all of the teams of the league compared. In convention leagues, in each statistical category, the teams are ranked and given a point values accordingly. In the head-to-head format, a first fantasy team plays, i.e., competes directly against, a second fantasy team (as opposed to the entire league in the rotisserie style).
The current fantasy sports paradigm is limited, however. First, fantasy sports are designed for competition only between a finite number of teams, commonly between 4-30 fantasy teams that comprise the fantasy league. As a result, those who wish to participate but are not part of the league cannot. Second, each fantasy league is designed to award an overall winner, perhaps a limited subset of winners from the league (like second or third place), based on wins and losses, and perhaps supplementary winner determined by a playoff system that also involves wins/losses or overall statistical points. There is presently no automated, real-time competition system within or among fantasy leagues that ordinarily and regularly calculates any statistic, besides wins/losses or total points, to compare fantasy teams. Consequently, fantasy teams that are not performing well over the course of a season, i.e., are out of contention, often suffer from waning interest in the league over the course of the season. In other words, a team that has no chance of winning the league effectively has nothing to play for.
Professional gambling industries have developed methods and systems to provide an array of entertainment to sports fans. For example, even when a fan's favorite team is out of contention for a season championship, the fan can maintain interest by placing side wagers or proposition bets, which are secondary to his favorite team's overall record and chances of a championship, where applicable and allowed by law. The bet can be on the performance by the team from game to game, performance of players, or and any other measurable statistic. Professional gambling applies to large, publicly recognized sports with mass public appeal. However, no system is available that identifies individual fantasy leagues as a pool and source of secondary gaming and side bets.
Certain publicly offered gambling services, such as Fantasy Sports Exchange®<http://www.playspex.com> and Casino Station in Las Vegas, Nev. have introduced betting on player statistics rather than outcomes of games, particularly for players in the National Football League. Additional, proposition bets have been commonly offered by casinos for numerous variables in the sporting industry, including and especially with respect to the Superbowl® produced by the National Football League. These casinos do not focus on individual leagues as the basis for the bets, however. That is, these casinos do not contemplate wagers placed on individual leagues by fantasy team owners within the league or people outside of the league seeking to bet on events and outcomes in a league. Additionally, these casinos do not contemplate the system of integrating secondary wagers in fantasy sports with a pre-existing fantasy league.
Fantasy sports are in need of a way to increase consistent and long lasting interest by fantasy owners and/or fantasy participants. That is, fantasy sports need to provide fantasy owners with a higher level of enjoyment, increased participation, and a fuller, more interactive experience, for example, for owners who fall out of contention for their fantasy championship, but wish to remain active in fantasy sports nonetheless. Accordingly, there is an unmet need in the art for one or more secondary games playable by fantasy sports enthusiasts and others that provide competition in addition to simply determining the overall winner of each league.
More specifically, there is a need in the art for a secondary gaming system in fantasy sports that allows fantasy teams, and their fantasy owners, to compete against one another on one or more user selected variables (i.e., player statistics and fantasy team outcomes) to expand the level of competition between fantasy teams in a fantasy league, or provide an avenue of interest in a fantasy sports league for individuals not a part of the league. Thus, there is a need for an automated system and methods to provide secondary gaming on fantasy league. More specifically, there is a need in the art for a system or methods to propose, present, post, record, monitor, update, and otherwise define secondary games in a league, by integrating such information or supplementing such information to a computerized league manager.